Friday, July 11, 2003

Microsoft goes after larger clients, will compete directly with Oracle

Microsoft goes after larger clients, will compete directly with Oracle "Microsoft Corp., which has denied it was targeting big payroll- and accounting-software clients, is changing strategy and selling to larger customers, a move that puts the company in direct competition with Oracle Corp.
"This will be a head-on collision with Oracle, you bet," Orlando Ayala, a Microsoft senior vice president who runs sales to small and mid-sized companies, said in an interview. "They are moving down to smaller customers, and we are moving up."
...
"Ayala acknowledged that the company still isn't aiming to be the main program used by big companies such as Ford, just one application used by a specific division. He wouldn't rule out the possibility of entering that market in the future."
"We'd never disregard entering that part," he said. "But it won't be next year."

So I guess few people took "software scale-out" seriously, if this comes as a surprise...